


Keeping her Strength

by sanctum_c



Series: Tifa Week 2019 [3]
Category: Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Gen, Martial Arts, Missing Scene, No Dialogue, Strength, Training
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:41:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27761665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanctum_c/pseuds/sanctum_c
Summary: Training and practice can never stop.
Relationships: AVALANCHE & Tifa Lockhart
Series: Tifa Week 2019 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2016010
Comments: 2





	Keeping her Strength

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt 'Strength'

Strength was something to work at for Tifa. It wasn’t an incidental side-effect like for Aeris; dragging and moving huge sacks of soil and fertiliser gave her a physique she hid as best she could beneath a bolero jacket. Maintaining an image, maintaining a disguise – and few enough people understood the implications of how hard she could bring her staff down on an enemy. Nor was Tifa’s strength like the near magical augmentation of a SOLDIER. Cloud was thin and lithe, but could swing the imposing mass of the Buster Sword around without a second thought; neither Tifa not Aeris could replicate the feat - though between them they could shift the thing. If needed. A purely academic notion and certainly in no way a possible future prank.

Each morning was a return to exacting, familiar katas. Tifa ran through them the same way she had under Zangan. Her muscles did not factor much into her job – when she used to have one – though lifting kegs and crates solo helped immensely. Barret was the one intended in charge of security back in Midgar, his physique on display as a deterrent. Tifa’s exposed but somehow not a factor to many. A warning many chose to ignore; she played the role of a slum-typical barmaid. Ignoring her ownership of the bar and the truth she was as – if not more – capable of dealing with the riff-raff, but doing so risked both damage to her establishment and a pause from serving the customers. Those customers she and Avalanche were dependent on for funding.

Time to bed the night before, location, situation; none mattered for the training. With a few exceptions admittedly. When Touch-mes invaded the tent near Gongaga and rendered her in frog form for half the day, it was clearly futile to try and carry out the training. Frog limbs had neither the articulation or the musculature to perform the movements. A lost day; she made up for it the next day. Come rain or shine.

Always making up for lost time – and in such a way she ignored any audience. Aeris was at least good company, but frustrating when some strangers caught sight of her and paused to gawp. No time for them. She was still recapturing lost time years later. The four months from the fire of Nibelheim until her awakening in Sector Seven.

No training, no practice, her arms no longer so toned. Not something she could be truly held responsible, but the slide back to before unwanted. She had failed at the reactor; panic, confusion, magic or something else did not matter. When the time came Dad taken from her – and she had not laid one finger on his murderer. Her fault again; trying to turn his weapon – as if she had any experience with swords – against him.

Unsurprising; the nature of her strength was defensive. Her fury, her rage; the thought of striking Sephiroth with her hands and feet had not occurred. And she had suffered. For a time he was gone and she prepared for the next threat. Now he was back and more ethereal than before. She would need to be ready once more. No risk of anything similar happening again, of any more loved ones taken.

Sephiroth was one person at least. Not like the Shinra corporation whose strength was indirect and evasive, not easy to strike head on. And all her training and all her strength had not helped when the company took Biggs, took Wedge, took Jessie. Took so many who lived in Sector Seven. Whose negligence lead to daily deaths, whose reckless pursuit of profits threatened the life of the Planet itself. She could not kick the company or punch its actions. But she would stand up to them, to Sephiroth wherever she could. Fight for the Planet in any way. Bombs in the past; she helped get Cloud and Barret close enough to set the charges. She helped fight their way into the reactor and fight back out again.

Strength was something to work at – and perhaps always would be. As nice as it would be to no longer need to fight, to retire back. For the world to be safe, Sephiroth defeated, Shinra no more. And if they fell, Tifa would carry out her kata. Keep her strength and her capabilities. For the next threat to her family, to her home, to the world.


End file.
